How to be a Great Single-Dad

Being a parent is hard work and being single parent is even more so.  My daughter’s mom and I have been separated for going on two years now and figuring out what makes a good single-dad and how to ensure I’m doing it has been bumpy journey thus far.  I think that for the most part, I’m doing fairly well.   I don’t profess to be any sort of expert on the subject, I just want to share what I’ve picked up since shifting from the role of daddy to single-daddy two years ago.  My inspiration for this list comes from reading two well thought out list by  Leo of ZenHabits (on being a good dad) and and Vered (of MomGrind)writing on how to be the mom of mom’s.

My list will be broken up for the sake of avoiding my typical essay-length rants.

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Dad is just as important as Mom

An interesting post that can be found at BlogFathers speaks to the reluctance that both men and women share in leaving their children in the care of men.   It would seem that society as a whole has, let’s say, a ‘reluctance’ (at best) to believe that men and women are equal in this regard.   Men ‘tend’ to be more predatory?  Men ‘tend’ be less nurturing (therefore irrelevant) in care of children?  Whatever gross generalization is used to reinforce this sexist myth is irrelevant.  It is poisonous rhetoric that alienates men from being involved and nurturing caregivers instead of harsh disciplinarians whose most important role is to put bread on the table.   

In custody matters after a divorce, when a mom wants custody, it’s unsurprising but when a dad wants custody, lawyers shy away.  When I discovered this double-standard through my own experiences and kept getting subjected to it, there was a moment where I really started to doubt my belief that I am as necessary as a mother.   Thankfully, I got this non-sense out of my head.   If I hadn’t, I suspect that I would have started down the road of ‘deadbeat’ dad that flip flops between wanting to be involved in their child’s life and then disappearing off the face of the earth for months at a time because he feel like an outsider in what used to be ‘his’ family.   If you’re an involved-dad, kudos to you.  We are role-models to our children. We can bring home the bacon AND clean up the cuts-and-scrapes on our kids knees AND cook (however well) dinner.  We can attend school plays, shower praise on our kids when they do well and when they just need to hear it.    Single Moms AND Single Dads have been doing it for some time now and if society only wants to see the successes of the moms, that’s society’s problem, not ours.

Our children learn about men and what it means to be a man through watching, talking and listening to us.  If we do not teach them through example of what fathers are truly capable of, then we allow society and the media to do it instead.  And from what I’ve been seeing, they do a shitty job.